It seems they favoured quantity over quality. I wish two variants were the limit. They did a good job on a few categories such as the kickback/rumbler (shotgun/grenade launcher), the revolvers (one has ADS, the other has rapid fire and they both have different animations), etc.
However, most of the three variant range options are… Meh. Each variation should serve a different purpose IMO. There’s always the one with lower damage but high rate of fire, the opposite and the one in between. The last one is usually the really bad one no one cares about. My idea would be to remove one variation, try to mix the lackluster options together and add a unique mechanic to make a single better varition that would feel “almost” like a new weapon.
For example, the MG IV lasgun could be full auto (to spare my fingers and my mouse without the need of a mod) and the other two could be mixed into a single semi auto variation and you could swap between a 1x and 2x scope zoom.
I’m essentially talking about ranged weapons but this applies to melee options too. I think only shotguns have a reason to exist in three variants because of their special round.
I know this will not solve all the balancing issues but maybe it would be easier to address and focus on a specific category at a time. And then add real new weapons…
I get the sense that this (usually) three way split on each weapon was never the original intent. It strikes me more as a halfbaked substitute for actual meaningful weapon customization, which to my understanding was their actual original plan.
But I agree, it feels silly and contrived a lot of the time and leads to way more complicated balancing where inevitably, some variant of some weapon will be locked in an underperforming state. The Graia infantry autogun is a good example. It’s not good at anything the other two are not better at, which probably means we don’t actually need 3 variants of infantry autoguns in the first place.
I think you’re right. Maybe they wanted to implement a weapon skill tree like in Deep Rock Galactic. You decide if you want more ammo, more damage, some unique features, etc.
I know some people always try to make specific builds to make things work… More or less but I agree. The Graia is useless. This applies for the heavy stubbers for the ogryn too. Recon lasguns are in a terrible state right now and it will be a mess to balance these three weapons at the same time. Same about headhunter autoguns and Helbore lasguns. When you think about braced autoguns, people only care about the Agripinaa.
Sure, fewer variants would mean less work all in all, but as a whole I don’t see this as a variant problem but rather a balancing one in general. Like, take a look at Trauma’s blessings and how many of them don’t even work.
This whole topic of variant & blessing balance is one of the oddities I just can’t figure out. Many of these problems have existed since release 1.5 years ago and have never been addressed. Many of them also had simple solutions, at least on a design level. So why?
I mean lets take your example: A gun has 3 variants and only one of them is good, so everyone uses that. Let’s say it’s the one with high dmg but low firing spd & ammo. All you have to do to balance the others is to increase their firing spd and/or ammo, maybe lower the recoil or something until they strike a balance. It’s very simple. Sure, there’s always a risk you missed something, maybe the increased fire spd has talent synergies that accidentally make it OP? Then you adjust. This stuff happens anyway, all the time and in every patch, it’s nothing new.
But to go 1.5 years without even making the attempt, while this problem exists in virtually every single weapon family? 1.5 years with blessings that are just objectively horribly bad, don’t even work, or mostly duplicates? How does that happen? I’m not trying to be a jerk here or pass blame, any number of things could be going on (and probably are), things we have no way of even knowing about.
But removing a few variants won’t help unless what remains is getting balanced.
Weapon customisation from what we know wasn’t going to do what the melee variant do (change move sets)
Ranged Variants for me don’t really matter much for me, but melee variants is something I’m quite pleased to see due to having played VT1/2 for quite a while and often having weapons where I like the weapon itself, but not the move set (War pick; Elven Great Sword; Salt’s Axe…)
There’s actual evidence of this being the case: In interviews pre-release, they talked about how we would be able to turn up how much energy a las weapon consumes per shot, making it do more damage, at the tradeoff of consuming more ammo per shot. This talked about system was part of the weapon cusotmization system. The only leftover of it today is that some las weapon marks consume more ammo per shot than others. Which on its own doesn’t really make sense, if not for this scrapped system they’d just adjust their mags/ammo capacity accordingly and make them consume 1 ammo per shot like you would expect. So 100% this is clearly just a leftover remnant from this system. (Interestingly, this system also would explain lasguns from a balance perspective, as they’re basically just worse autoguns anymore. Being able to cusotmize the power output would’ve given them a relevant niche)
I’m personally hoping that the upcoming itemization overhaul is this promised weapon system that lets us make our own MK instead of picking from preset ones, and they get rid of the “preset MK” system entirely. As in, delete all the weapons and let us start over with full customization as promised pre-release. Oh, you want a shotgun that fires big meaty shots like the kantrael, but has slugs? Assemble your barrel and special ammo yourself. That kind of thing was what they hinted at, and it’s what I hope the upcoming rework will be.
I’m aware those are extremely high hopes I have and it probably won’t happen, but by all means this is what they said the game would have and what I think it should have. Considering they to this day made sure the weapon marks of a kind all share the same blessing pool, I think there is a chance it could happen.
Sure, fewer variants would mean less work all in all, but as a whole I don’t see this as a variant problem but rather a balancing one in general. Like, take a look at Trauma’s blessings and how many of them don’t even work.
It’s true that they completely abandonned a bunch of weapons for quite some time. Many of them deserve some love. However, my point is they have to balance each weapon family as you mentionned, but all the variants that compete against each other at the same time.
In the current state, people will favour highest DPS variant. Now we could imagine they would do some maths and find the right formulas to make sure all variations have the same DPS but what’s the point? You would have to choose between a weapon with a high rate of fire but low damage and a low rate of fire but high damage to achieve exactly the same thing. Boring.
I know people seem to prefer the old revolver but at least the new one offers a slight gameplay change. Even if it’s a little bit underperforming, it’s still fun to use and that’s a big difference. Most of the other weapons function exactly the same. They have the same animations, the same flashlight, the same attachments, etc.
As the others said, we can dream of a real customization system. But sadly, I guess there won’t even be an improvement of all these useless weapons.
